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Players & Characters

With its focus on discovery and lack of combat The Road To Petra has a different style from other 6d6 adventures. The Players' Briefing sets the style and tone of the adventure for the players and advises them on character generation. Game Leaders using the pre-generated characters should skip the parts on character creation but brief the players before they select their characters.

Players' Briefing

The Road To Petra is an adventure focusing on investigation, horror and role playing, set in the modern world. The characters are members of a TV crew recording a documentary series about strange phenomena and mysteries in the Middle East. The characters may be presenters, experts, drivers, camera operators or other technicians working for the show. The player characters are joined by non-player characters who make up the rest of the 12-strong team.

The TV crew are filming Science in the Danger Zone!, a program for the Mystery! Science! TV channel. They are scheduled to visit the West Bank region and the Sinai peninsular to investigate three mysteries.

Episode One: Plague From Space?

Shortly after a meteor was seen across the region a virulent plague erupted in the city of Ramallah. This has echoes of a historical meteor and plague from 43CE and an artifact linked to those events has been stolen from a local museum.

Episode Two: Killed By Ghosts?

A village in the West Bank has been abandoned after ghosts were repeatedly seen. A local TV crew who spent the night in the village has disappeared and is presumed dead.

Episode Three: Time Travelling Roman?

A man dressed as a Roman legionary was knocked down and killed by a truck in the Sinai desert. The victim had no identification on them, no modern clothes, and everything about their body and equipment suggests it is a 2nd century Roman soldier.

Characters created for the adventure should have 70CP and focus their abilities on advantages relating to investigation and research. This includes searching locations, social skills and academic expertise. Knowledge of areas such as ancient languages, history, occult, diseases, psychology and science will be useful. It will be best to favour advantages which cover broad areas of expertise rather than specific skills which may not be used. The adventures take place in the Middle East, and abilities (particularly languages) should reflect this.

Within the adventure there is no combat. Character Points spent on weapon-related skills and equipment or on combat-specific advantages will be wasted. Most of the challenges and dangers faced by the characters with be cerebral in nature and physical abilities such as Movement advantages will have very limited use. The adventure largely takes place in or around cities so survival and navigation skills are not specifically needed.

The characters will face few if any direct physical attacks which do Life damage with its associated risk of dying. Instead, they are challenged by psychological trauma such as the bloody aftermath of a bomb, extreme stress and situations which question everything the character believes in. Rather than injuries the characters will gain status effects such as nightmares, paranoia and addiction. Overall Mind and Soul advantages will be much more useful than Body advantages.

Above all, players should build their characters with a strong personality and an interesting backstory which is reflected in their choice of advantages. Abilities which are anchored to the character's history and their identity will allow them more flexibility when facing the psychological and metaphysical challenges ahead of them.

The Production Team

There are twelve people in the production team, and six of them are included as pre-generated characters (see Appendix). Players may create their own characters to replace anyone on the team except the producer, Farouk Hosny.

Producer and in charge of the team. Egyptian but now living in New York where he works full time for Mystery! Science! TV.

Pamela Hoskins

A former US fighter pilot who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, now a TV personality renown for her no-nonsense style and direct approach to problems. She is the show's host.

Dr Derek Fabbington-Hay

Good-looking and with a posh English accent he quickly found being a science reporter on TV far more rewarding than being a scientist. Co-host and the show's science expert.

Dr Christina Peters

A historian and linguist with a distinguished academic career behind her. It is her bookish manner, sharp wit and obvious discomfort with roughing it which has made her a popular personality on TV shows. Christina is the show's expert on anything historical.

Dr Earl Bennett

A qualified medical doctor but no longer practises. He makes a living online writing about alien abduction, cryptid animals and similar fringe science wackiness. His blog and web show, Weird Shit I've Seen, is hugely popular.

Jack House

A proud Glaswegian and ex-special forces soldier who now works as a security consultant / body guard. He speaks seven languages, three fluently and is very good with people. He is the security and safety officer for the team.

George Mourad

His parents were Syrian but he grew up in Paris. Previously George worked as a camera operator for a TV news channel and has worked in some of the world's toughest locations covering wars and disasters. Now with a young family, he is taking on less risky employment.

Ghada Shouaa

Originally from Jordan but now based in New York she is the team's sound engineer and has worked extensively with both George Mourad and Farouk Hosny in the past.

Asha Haji Elmi

Born in Somalia during the civil war, raised in the UK as a refugee, Asha is a fiercely independent and strong-willed woman. She is the team's assistant producer.

Reem Acra

Winner of the Silver medal in the 2000 Olympics, representing Lebanon in the weight-lifting. Served in the Lebanese army and now works in security. She is one of the team's three drivers and acts as minder for the female team members in places where men are not allowed.

Naim Attallah

A young Palestinian man who grew up in the West Bank and went to a school funded by Yousef al-Masri. Easy-going and friendly with a gift for languages, he is one of the team's drivers. This is his first job as anything other than a taxi driver.

Maurice Floquet

Born in Algiers to French parents, he has been a missionary in the Congo, an aid worker in Burma, a policeman in the Australian outback and a convict in the Philippines, and claims to be the first man to swim all three Great Lakes. He now lives in Cairo and works as a fixer for TV crews. He is the team's third driver.

The team travels around in three identical four-wheel-drive vehicles emblazened with the Mystery! Science! TV logo. The cars have been specially outfitted for TV productions in harsh and hostile terrain including extra fuel tanks, reinforced suspensions and improved electrical systems. The doors are filled with anti-ballistic material and the windows are tinted as well as being bullet-resistant.